It was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliar dress knew what they were about. But don’t trouble about arrangements yet you have been asleep a very long time and “and the important thing is to get over that, sir.” (Graham concluded the word was sir, but this man pronounced it “Sire.”) “I am afraid it would be difficult to-wire to your cousin. “How stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall be done, sir,” he said to Graham. The flaxen-bearded man gave a cry of comprehension. “He means send an electric telegram,” volunteered the third, a pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. “Wire, sir?” said the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled. “What an odd blurr in his accent!” whispered the red-haired man. He knew he ought to be somewhere in Cornwall, but he could not square these things with that impression.Ī matter that had been in his mind during his last waking moments at Boscastle recurred, a thing resolved upon and somehow neglected. His eyes went from face to face of the three people about him. “Graham did not answer, but these words served their reassuring purpose. Wells (1899) Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons You have heard? Catalepsy? It may seem strange to you at first, but I can assure you everything is well.” He was a pleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, and a clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe. “Better?” asked the man in violet, as Graham’s eyes reopened. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mist played over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshment increased. “e said, something further that Graham could not hear, and a little phial was handed across to him. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep. Slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper’s ears. The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with a A voice seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled. He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. “What does this all mean?” he said slowly. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenly closed. “Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shouting together. When he recovered his senses, he was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth at heart and throat.

He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life and death, for the better part of an hour.

Graham’s last impression before he fainted was of the ringing of bells.

When the sleeper awakes